Monday, September 29, 2014

A vaquero, or cowboy, participating
in a cattle roundup in Colombia’s LlanosOrientales, the vast grasslands spreading East of the Andes Mountains.

To view more Colombia photos on this blog, write the word in the search
box.

All the photographs of this blog
are copyrighted.

No usage permitted without prior
authorization.

There is a saying in Colombia, which is that good things can come from
bad ones. It’s often true. And It’s happened to me.

By 1985, living in Colombia, my wife’s country, as a freelance
documentary photographer and writer, I had seen my income shrink worryingly. So
much so that I considered emigrating back to the United States, where I had lived
previously for 12 years. But I found it hard to throw the towel. Instead I
self-published a photo book on the region I lived in, the Cauca Valley, and it was
an instant best-seller. At least by Colombian standards. This pushed me to self-publish
eight more books on Colombia, one a year, all of which sold well.

In 1995, as I was ready to go to press with a new photo book, on Ecuador
this time, that country got involved in a war with Peru, its economy collapsed,
and book sales ended overnight, leaving me with material that had cost me
dearly and would never see publication. Coincidentally, Colombia was going
through financial and insecurity hell. And book stores there stopped paying me for
the few books they were still selling.

Not only that, but kidnapping for ransom had become a very real threat,
for myself and for my family, and many Colombians left the country for safer
ones. I could no longer travel safely around Colombia. Worst of all, the color
slides I mailed to American publishers in response to requests had stopped getting
back to me and I was losing hundreds of my best pictures.

The reason was that the drug mafia had started using registered mail to
send huge amounts of hundred dollar bills back from the U.S. Registered mail had been the way my color
slides had traveled between Colombia, the U.S., and the world. After some post
office employees discovered dollars in the mail, the word went around and registered
mail from the U.S. stopped being delivered. It was opened at the post offices and
then thrown away—without the dollars but with my color slides.

Even if that had not happened, something else had started making my work
impossible in Colombia. The last few packages that had still been returned to
me came back with most of the color slides perforated. Attempting to stop the flow
of cocaine, American or Colombian authorities must have passed needles through
the packages to check if any white powder would stream out.

Emigration was again on the table, and this time it was impossible to
avoid, even though my wife, Martha, and our two teenage sons rebelled against
the idea of abandoning what had been an idyllic life. I hated the idea too, for
I had been very happy there myself. And I had already lived in several
countries—Belgium, where I was born and raised; Germany; the former Belgian Congo,
Canada, and the U.S. But our sons, 18 and 19, spent their weekends out late at
night when streets were most dangerous. If anything happened to them I would
have to blame myself for it. I could not stand the thought of it. Anyway, how
would I maintain our way of life without an income?

Once again, however, everything turned better after arriving in the
U.S.. Jean-Pierre and Philippe went to university in Philadelphia and ended up
with jobs and incomes they could not have dreamed of, had they graduated in Colombia. And I got back in
business, traveling the world again, not just Latin America. Poor Martha was
the great loser. She lost her domestic help and her many friends. But like our
sons, and for the sake of them, she ended up accepting the wisdom of our move.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

A mysterious woman in a mysterious back alley is carrying lunch and tea
to a mysterious person behind a blue door. I caught the scene in Ethiopia’s Harar,
Islam’s fourth holy city and a UNESCO World Heritage.

To view more
Ethiopia photos on this blog, write the word in the search box.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

A Tigrinya woman attending a crowded market in Mekelle, in Ethiopia’s
Tigray Province, stands out by the luxury of her baby carrier, though her discolored dress reveals her as probably poor. The cross on the
carrier reminds us of her Coptic Christian religion.

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box.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

My last post showed four siblings riding a horse from
a rural Ecuadorian school. Those of you who may have wondered how they got on
the horse will find hereafter the sequence Birgit, the 12-year-old sister, followed.
I was as curious as anyone to watch this.

The horse and kids’ clothes differ from those of
the previous post. It’s because I shot those pictures on different days. And
Birgit always needed to use whichever horse was currently available.

Standing on a stirrup, Birgit started by hanging the
school bags to the saddle’s horn.

Then she lifted the little girl that would ride in
front of her.

Then the little boy who would ride behind her.

And then Carmen, the seven-year-old Miss Rodeo.

Finally, lifting a long leg, Birgit lifted herself and squeezed in
without hurting any of the kids with her spur.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Birgit, the teenage cowgirl l showed in my last two posts, has a
full-time job on her family’s Ecuador estancia. One of them is to bring three
of her siblings to school and back every day. The last little girl on the
horse, who was seven at the time of this picture, had already won a miss rodeo
title for her horse stunts. She could easily have taken Birgit’s place on the
horse herself. But she could not have lifted the others on the horse.

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Thursday, September 18, 2014

Twelve-year-old Birgit
asked me to photograph her with Paula, her favorite cow. She works as a cowgirl
on her family’s vast hacienda, or cattle ranch, in the coastal lowlands of Ecuador’s
Guayas Province. She’s the same I showed on my yesterday’s post, riding a horse
with a sheep across her lap.

I spent several
days photographing her and her 14-year-old sister Belén at work. First, during
the dry season, when they spend much of their time on horseback. Later, during
the rainy season, when their family’s land sinks under Andean torrents, and moving is now done mostly
by canoe.

By then the family’s
men and their cowboys had moved most of the hacienda’s 400 zebus, nearly100 sheep, and many horses to higher
ground for several months. They had left behind only two or three cows to keep
the women with milk.

I’m planning a
children’s ebook of the girls’ lives. I’ll title it

Young Cowgirls in Ecuador: A Time for Horses, A Time
for Canoes.

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box.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

African women never leave their small children out of sight. They carry
them on their backs wherever they go and to whatever task that awaits them. A thoughtful
fruit vendor at the market of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, installed her baby girl
inside a water-filled basin. It’s hot in Abidjan, and the baby happily throws
water at herself.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Patagonian sheep enjoy great social life, much space to roam over, and
plenty to eat. But, as in some human societies, at some time in their lives
they must go under the knife. And sooner or later they end up as roast meat.

This post includes
12 photographs

A gaucho herds sheep back to an estancia’s white buildings, visible as white dots above
the horse’s head along the San José Gulf, at the tip of the Valdés Peninsula. They
are needed there to be sheared.

Under a heavy sky, along fields of wild yellow flowers, a gaucho is herding sheep back to a corral in Patagonia’s Chubut Province.

Gauchos marking lambs's ears. To rapidly distinguish between capons, ordinary
females, and females reserved for breeding, the men cut capons’tails midway
and those of ordinary females entirely. They let the breeders keep their tails.

In Patagonia’s
Valdés Peninsula sheep await their turn to be shorn of
their wool.

Inside the shed of a Valdés Peninsula’s estancia, a dozen men are
shearing sheep. Their shears come attached to the tentacles of a motorized
machine built like a carousel. Legs tied, other sheep lie around awaiting their
turn.

Shorn sheep returning to pasture.

Preparing wool to be packed.

Waiting
for more wool before closing the bundle.

Stacking bundles of wool for pick up.

Marking bundles for pick up.

A Puerto Madryn-based veterinarian, owner of the large Valdés Peninsula
hacienda shown in some of the above photographs, is sharing a barbecued rack of
sheep with his two gauchos and me. He helped me find the two horses I used in a
1984 Patagonia crossing whose story Smithsonian magazine published.

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box.

Signed Prints

There are a thousand pictures on this blog. For a limited time, I'm offering three 8 x 10 inch signed prints of any of them for only $99, shipping included to American addresses. Other sizes available. For more information write to viengleb@aol.com